Download the whitepaper from here:

ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/orw03017usen/ORW03017USEN.PDF

To further strengthen the key part that IBM Collaboration Solution is playing in this is the fact that not one but two of IBM ‘s senior executives was on stage at the opening session of Lotusphere John Iowata Senior VP Marketing and Mike Rhodin Senior VP SWG Collaboration solution.

We are moving In to a new era of business we have gone from mainframe, pc and Internet as the major eras of computing and now we are entering the social era of business.

Most of the plumbing are done in the enterprises and it is becoming an utility where you by from the lowest bidder and most of the components needed are to be considered commodities.

Let’s take a few examples hardware have been comoditised  to the level where x86 hardware in conjunction with the right software can compete with the mainframe in terms of availability, reliability and power but at a fraction of the cost (Cloud). The next layer that is being comoditised is the operating system’s with the development of vitalization technologies that have the basic aspects of an operating system the need for a traditional operating system is becoming smaller and smaller on the server side.  The same development is occurring on the client side where the functionality is moving in to the browser (chrome os) and operating systems like the chrome os are the first of many to follow.

Next market to become comoditised is the middleware market as it matures there will be less and less that are differentiating the different vendors in terms of capabilities. In terms of money spent as a percentage of the it budget in the short and mid term the middleware market will still attract the largest part  of the money.

We are rapidly moving in to a space where the consumer market is driving the it industry (Erich schmit interview) and in this space solutions will be the differentiator. Solutions that can connect people, increase productivity and show business value with in 3-6 months.

It will be int he solution space where companies invest in order to gain a key differentiator and a competitive advantage.

The last time we hade a wave in the industry where we focused on productivity was back in the late 80′s when personal productivity suites was introduced, and we saw a huge increase in productivity from the usage of pc’s.

Lotus was a major player and drove the market for personal productivity and collaboration with products such as 1-2-3 and Lotus Notes, now IBM Collaboration Solutions is going to be The driving force in the next era of focus on social business and organizational  efficiency.

At a walk between the Dolphin and Swan at lotusphere I got in to a discussion with Louis Richardsson where we talked about how to value employees in the era of social business and Luis said some thing that got me thinking. “it’s not what an employee produce rod deliver that is his value to the company any more it’s who he is connected to that he or she should be valued for”. And I think Louis is absolutely right and it’s only a matter of time until we will se you personal network and how connected you are as one of the core metrics for hr departments when evaluating talent.

It’s there fore I’m exceptionally glad to be part of the IbM Collaboration Solutions team as we are very early in entering this arena and combining tools that let’s you run you business as a social business to make sure that innovation prosper and grow teams can be more efficient and at the same time give the metrics to the corporation so that they can measure and monitor the effectiveness of these solutions.

We are very very early to the game here and I think that we will se many of our competitors to quickly follow in this space.

Towards the end of last year, IBM hosted a webcast called “The Social Workplace” with the following participants (clockwise starting from top-left):

• Jennifer Okimoto – Leader of Smarter Work Center of Competency, IBM Global Services
• Josip Petrusa – GenY / Millenial Blogger
• Sameer Patel – Partner at Sovos Group.
• Jennifer Beal – Sr Research Scientist, Center of Creative Leadership

I first met Jennifer Okimoto through our internal social media tool. In one of my trips to San Francisco, I had a chance to meet Jennifer in person. She’s a super smart person and works first hand with customers helping them drive that culture shift towards Enterprise 2.0. Therefore, this is one of those webcasts that I really wish I had attended, but just didn’t get a chance to attend because of all the Connections 3.0 release madness. However, the entire webcast is available for replay here so I just got a chance to go through it.

Here’s a 15-minute highlight of the webcast:

Here’s the full 1-hour long webcast:

Some take aways:

• Customers expect to connect to real person — employees expect the same thing
• It’s not a matter of if companies will become social, it’s a matter of when
• Employees are using tools not approved by IT, often times outside of firewall, because existing tools are not good enough

I strongly encourage you to add this to your to-do of things to listen, if you haven’t yet.

The app description form the appstore:

“APPLICATION DESCRIPTION

mLinked and mLinked Free are native iPhone applications to communicate with your public or corporate social network based on IBM Lotus Connections. IBM Lotus Connections is the industry leading solution for social software. Through mLinked you are able to connect directly from you iPhone to your network, search for profiles, make status updates and read blogs. mLinked Free features: – Pre-configured for Bleedyellow, My DeveloperWorks and Lotus Greenhouse – Support multiple networks – Status updates – Search profiles – Profile and network information – Call and e-mail directly from profiles – Accept and send invitations – Read, browse and recommend blogs – Supports IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 and 3.0 mLinked features: – Same features as mLinked Free – Configure and connect to your Lotus Connections networks Enjoy working with mLinked!

LANGUAGES:
English, Dutch

REQUIREMENTS:
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 4.2 or later.”

Link to the iTunes appstore, click here.

Are you psyched about Lotusphere 2011 ?  You should be!  We have a bit over 3 weeks left and I’m sure all of you are already planning your schedules for Lotusphere. We thought it would be a good idea to capture all the social related sessions at Lotusphere 2011 in one place.  This way, we’ll help you start thinking about which sessions to go to. 
Also, in case you missed it, Genii Software has created a Notes database with all the sessions in it. It’s really nice because you can create your schedule directly from that database.  Additionally, you can Tweet the session details or even check into it using Foursquare.  If you need mobile access to the list of sessions, The Turtle Partnership has created a free Blackberry app.  They also created free iPhone app. An iPad app is awaiting approval from Apple and will be available soon.
Note that this list does not include the sessions that will be presented at the Social Business Industry Symposium (sponsored by Wired Magazine).

JMP203        IBM Lotus Quickr for IBM Lotus Domino in Action   Sunday, 1:30pm

JMP205        IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 Administration Overview   Sunday, 1:30pm

INV101        Powering a Market Leading Business with Social Collaboration   Monday, 1pm

INV111        Making Decisions Collaboratively with Cognos Business Intelligence & IBM Lotus Connections Tuesday, 10am

INV112        The Social Side of IBM’s New Advanced Case Management Offerings   Wednesday, 10am

INV117        Social Media in 2011: 10-Minute Warning   Tuesday, 10am

INV201        A “Day in the Life†Exceptional Work Experience   Tuesday, 4:45pm

INV202        Building the Vision of an Exceptional Collaborative Work Experience   Wednesday, 4:45pm

INV203        Content-Centric vs People-Centric: The Copernican Revolution of Today’s Business   Wednesday, 11:15am

INV206        Collaborative Decision Making   Thursday, 11:15am

ID301                What’s New in IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 Monday, repeats on Tuesday, 11am

ID302                Best Practices for a Happy and Healthy IBM Lotus Connections Deployment! Tuesday, 1:30

ID303                Exceptional Work Experience – Integrating and Extending Connections, Portal, Quickr, Notes, Sametime & ECM  Monday, 11am

ID304                Lotus Connections User Management and SSO: What you NEED to know! Tuesday, 3:30pm

ID305                Build Large-scale Performing Enterprise Solutions for IBM Lotus Connections Tuesday, 4:45pm

ID306                Compliance and Moderation with Lotus Connections 3.0 Wednesday, 4:15pm

ID307                What’s New in IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5 Monday, 3:45pm

ID308                Architecture Deep Dive, Upgrade Deployment & Performance Best Practices for IBM Lotus Quickr for Domino 8.5   Monday 5:00pm

ID309                Extending Social Collaboration with Enterprise Content Wednesday, 3:00pm

ID701                IBM Lotus Advancements in a Mobile World Wednesday, 11:15am

AD301        Extending the Social Network – Part 1 Tuesday 4:45pm

AD302        Extending the Social Network – Part 2 Wednesday 8:30am

AD303        Connecting Developers and Community with Rational Jazz and Lotus Connections Tuesday, 1:30pm

AD304        Customizing Lotus Connections 3.0 Tuesday 10am

AD305        Deep Dive on UI and Server-side Customizations for IBM Lotus Quickr for Domino 8.5  Wednesday, 4:15pm

AD402        Developing Exceptional Web and Mobile Experiences with Social Capabilities Tuesday 11:15am

AD403        Repeatable Patterns with Industry Templates for Customer Experience Suite Monday 1:00pm

AD501        IBM Project Vulcan: The IBM Collaboration Toolkit Tuesday 4:45pm

AD504        Best Practices for Mobile User Experience Design Wednesday 10:00am

BP104        LDAP: The Amazing Infrastructure Challenge Monday 11:00am

BP105        Twelve MORE Things Your Mother Never Told You About Deploying IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 Monday 3:45pm

BP109        IBM Lotus Domino Admin to IBM WebSphere Application Admin – in 1 hour!  Wednesday 8:30am

BP114        IBM Lotus Connections Administration: From the Command Line to a Graphical UI Tuesday 4:45pm

BP205        Quickr 8.5 for Domino Development:  Forget Everything We’ve Ever Told You  Monday 5:00pm

BP206        Working with Feeds in IBM Lotus Notes and Domino  Tuesday 10:00am

BP303        Social Comes To You: How To Bring Connections to your Application in Context Wednesday 11:15am

CUST102        From the Flintstones to the Jetsons: The Avery Dennison InfoXchange Story Tuesday 11:15am

CUST104        BASF Implements connect.BASF: A Global Online Business Network  Tuesday 3:30pm

CUST106        How 3M got Social Wednesday 11:15am

CUST107        Coles Supermarket: Social Computing in a Retail Setting Wednesday 1:30pm

SHOW202        Enterprise 2.0 Hero: A Beginner’s Guide to Installing IBM Lotus Connections 3.0 Tuesday 4:30pm

SHOW203        Lotus Connections 3.0 – Enterprise Integration for Administrators Sunday, 4pm
There you have it.  42 social sessions during a three-and-half day span.  So put on your Social Business hat and join us at Lotusphere 2011. See you there!

The jam will focus on topic such as:

Building the Social Business of the Future

• What new social innovations can we theorize?
• How can social technologies help to deliver value through core business processes (R&D, HR, Finance etc).?

Building Participatory Organizations Through Social Adoption

• How can we align our organizational model, culture, and leadership social business adoption?
• How do we quantify the value of Social Business for the enterprise?
• Using Social to Understand and Engage with Customers

How does Social Business impact the future of CRM, marketing or communications
What are the implications for the way we manage brands?

• What Social means for IT
• How can IT organizations and get this these social technologies implemented in organizations?
• What technology options are there available to enable this transformation?

Identifying Risks and Establishing Governance

• What are the real risks of Social Business for the enterprise?
• What are the right policies and strategies to manage social

Find out more about what a JAM is and how IBM has been leveraging the technology for a decade already by watching this video

Head over to the site to get more information: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/info/social_business_jam/

Or go directly to the registration site: https://www.collaborationjam.com/minijam3/jam/registration/index.do?jamId=83289

Please re-tweet or repost this to your blog.

Why?  – I believe IBM and Lotus has a tremendous opportunity as the portal and social market is merging, I have always been keen on working with web and web based technologies so moving back in to an area that is close to heart feels great for me.

My primary focus areas will be working with Social Software and Mobile solutions.

One of the first thing’s I will do in my new role is to go to LotuSphere in Orlando so if you like to meet up ping med on twitter twitter.com/allerhed or e-mail me lars-olof@allerhed.com